The present disclosure relates to a method of manufacturing a substrate for a light emitting device.
In recent years, light emitting devices including light emitting elements such as light emitting diodes are used in various applications, and their inexpensive availability is desired. In order to meet the needs, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2017-076719 discloses a method of manufacturing a light emitting device including a substrate, and a light emitting element and a resin sheet on the substrate. Specifically, what is disclosed is a method of manufacturing a light emitting device including: providing a resin sheet that comprises a lattice-patterned reflective material-containing portion and film-shaped phosphor-containing portions covering lattice openings of the reflective material-containing portion; placing the resin sheet on a substrate mounting a plurality of light-emitting elements such that each of the plurality of light-emitting elements is surrounded by the reflective material-containing portion and is covered on the top with the phosphor-containing portion; after placing the resin sheet on the substrate, softening the resin sheet by heating such that the phosphor-containing portions are adhered to the respective upper surfaces of the plurality of light-emitting elements and the reflective material-containing portion or the phosphor-containing portions is/are adhered to the side surfaces of the plurality of light-emitting elements; and curing the resin sheet and the substrate to obtain individual light emitting devices.
However, light emitting devices being more inexpensive and smaller in size and weight are now in increasing demand. There are some cases where light emitting devices are manufactured by: arranging a plurality of light emitting elements on a substrate; and after performing predetermined steps, cutting the substrate. In such cases, the light emitting elements must be precisely mounted at their respective predetermined positions, and the substrate must be precisely cut at each predetermined position. For example, with the light emitting device disclosed in the patent publication No. 2017-076719 in which the surroundings of the light emitting element and the fluorescent material containing part are covered with the reflective member containing part, the reflective member containing part may be minimized in thickness to achieve downsizing. On the other hand, with greater variance in the cutting positions relative to the mounting positions of the light emitting elements and the resin sheet, the reflective member containing part must be great in thickness taking into consideration of the amount of variance and, hence, downsizing is limited. Further, greater variance in the cutting positions relative to the mounting positions of the light emitting elements and the resin sheet result in poor yields. That is, cost efficiency cannot be achieved.